


bird dreams

by jasondont (minigami)



Series: dishonored au [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hanging mention, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:14:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29318475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont
Summary: Obi-Wan finds himself in prison. The day of his execution the sky is very blue.
Relationships: Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: dishonored au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153571
Comments: 4
Kudos: 84





	bird dreams

**Author's Note:**

> more of that dishonored au no one asked for

i.

The sun breaks through Dunwall’s eternal cloud cover the day Obi-Wan’s scheduled to be executed.

His jailers, his once-upon-a-time brothers, don’t ever look at him, even while they kick him in the ribs, in the stomach—they look through him, as if Obi-Wan was dead already, a ghost, a spectre. He feels like one—sometimes he’s not sure he isn’t one. He’s fading away, he feels brittle and fragile and weightless. He lies for hours on his cot while the rats swarm on the other side of the door, looking for a way through, and the birds caw and crow and squawk outside. He stares at the ceiling and watches through their eyes, at the guards, at the city.

Sometimes he thinks they are the only thing that is keeping him alive—in his more alert moments, however, he can’t help but wonder if they are just pushing him faster to madness.

He usually leaves them alone—he is but a traveler, like a tick or a mite, something so small as to be weightless that’s found a place to sink its claws into their small brains. But sometimes, when he’s been beaten especially bad, or when he feels especially cold, or the boredom feels overwhelming—well. 

He never makes them do anything—usually just asking them to is more than enough. And then they descend upon Coldridge’s courtyards like a storm of blood and feathers and shiny black beaks, and he listens to the screams and he laughs and laughs and laughs, his voice hoarse and too loud in the quiet.

It's through their eyes he sees Fett. It’s early in the day, and the sun is shining, watery and weak but there. Obi-Wan closes his eyes and tries to soak up the warmth, and reaches out with his mind, with his senses.

At first he thinks he’s just a shadow, deeper and blacker against the pale sunlight—but no. He’s really there, on top of the rooftop, looking down on the courtyard. 

He’s wearing dark clothes—long black jacket, its hood up, a mask obscuring the lower half of his face. He’s blackened his weapons, and he’s wearing gloves, black leather, soft and worn.

Obi-Wan shivers—he still remembers how they feel against his skin—and opens his eyes. He sits up on his cot, for the first time in he doesn’t know how many hours, and approaches the window. He can’t see him, but the instinct to look for him is hard to resist. 

His execution is scheduled for noon. They’ll hang him in the courtyard—he can see the gallows through his window. 

Obi-Wan feels hope kindle in his chest—he squashes down the emotion, and when the noontime bells sound, he has the satisfaction of knowing he was right to do so, if not of much else.

He’s so weak they have to drag him out of his cell, his bare feet grazing the cold floor of the prison first and then against the mud of the courtyard outside. The sun is still shining, low and half-hidden between the clouds, and the air smells of the sea.

Obi-Wan wants to close his eyes, but he doesn’t—it would be interpreted as a weakness, as a sign of fear: and he might be weak, he might be afraid, but he still has his pride. He claws to that while they shackle his wrists at his back, the iron cold and heavy, while they make him climb up the stairs to the platform, the wood soft and half-rotten against the soles of his feet.

The courtyard is full of crows, of seagulls, of pigeons. They are all eerily quiet—Obi-Wan is shivering too hard to laugh, but he can feel a cackle trying to escape the cage of his mouth. He can taste his jailers’ fear on the back of his tongue, sweet and heady, and it’s such a small thing, but he is about to die: he’ll take it.

For so long he refrained; for so very long he looked away and refused to take the things he wanted, bound by duty, by fear, by pride, by shame. It was all for nothing—all his self-control has left him there, shackled and bound and about to be hanged.

Obi-Wan shivers and smiles and looks at his birds from under his overgrown hair, and enjoys the fear they provoke.

One of the overseers pushes him, his hand hard and rough right between the shoulderblades, and he trips, regains his balance with the help of a claw like hand around his right arm, straightens up his spine.

The thing is: they don’t even know he’s actually guilty of doing all the things he’s being accused of—he’s been thrown into prison because he made enemies in high places, because he was too smart but not enough to hide it, because he’s ignored orders and followed his own counsel one too many times.

His death, when it happens, won’t be for anything that matters: he is but a chess piece, unimportant in the grand scheme of things, that suddenly has found itself without value. 

Obi-Wan wonders what they’ve been making of the birds.

The hangman places the rope around his neck. It’s wet and heavy, and Obi-Wan stumbles once again. He looks up, up at the sky—at the birds. At the roof.

He thinks of Fett—of Jango. He wonders where he is. He’s glad he decided to save him, to heal his wounds and nurse him back to health, that he could have him, even if it was something that only happened in abandoned houses and flooded rooms and rotting, narrow cots. 

He wouldn’t call it nice—it wasn’t. Neither of them quite remember how to be kind. But it was good.

The hangman tightens the rope against his neck. Obi-Wan swallows, feels the fibers burn and scratch against the skin through his unkempt beard, and feels himself shudder once again. He isn’t even scared, anymore—he’s seen many hangings. He’s even ordered some. Thieves and murderers and suspected heretics. He didn’t like watching their deaths, too aware that it could have been him on the gallows.

If the Outsider exists, Obi-Wan supposes he must be laughing his Void-damned ass off right now.

“No. I’m not,” something whispers, right behind his right ear, the voice male and young and cold and so far away and so close at the same time.

Obi-Wan jumps, tries to turn to look at his back—the executioner grabs him by the shoulder, pulls him back, and that’s why Obi-Wan misses the first shot.

Something wet and warm wets the side of his neck, and the hangman gasps and gurgles—Obi-Wan turns to look at him, blinking, and sees the bolt that has gone right through the man’s throat. Someone yells, one of the guards, but their scream dies with a gurgle, and they follow the executioner. By then another overseer is trying to leave the courtyard, but Fett pops out of nothing, a shadow stepping out in the light, knife long and thin in his right hand, and he never makes it back inside.

The fight isn’t one—it’s a slaughter. Fett blinks in and out of existence, fast and clever and brutal, and it’s not so much a dance than it’s like watching a storm rolling on from the sea: he’s outnumbered until he isn’t, and then he’s just alone and dripping blood on the mud.

When he finishes he cleans his blade on his own jacket, and climbs the stairs to the gallows, his footsteps heavy and loud in the sudden quiet—Obi-Wan’s looking at him, incredulous, mouth dry, and even the birds have fallen quiet. Fett stinks of sweat and sewage and something that might be saltwater, and for a beat they just stare at each other.

Then the man pulls down his mask, takes off his cowl, and cuts off the rope. Obi-Wan falls to his knees, shuddering, still looking up at him. Fett sheathes his blade and crouches right in front of him, dark eyes warm, full of relief.

“I owed you one,” he says, voice rough. His hand, when he touches Obi-Wan, is so warm it burns through his thin shirt. He takes off his jacket and puts it on Obi-Wan, the leather heavy over his battered shoulders. 

The sun disappears behind a cloud, and soon the rain begins to fall. Fett helps him stand up and begins guiding him down the ladder. Obi-Wan tries to clear his throat, tries to answer—it takes him too long, but he finally finds his voice.

“I thought you wouldn’t come, I saw you on the roof but I didn’t think you’d come for me, I—.”

He’s babbling—he sounds like a madman. He knows he does.

Fett doesn’t react, and Obi-Wan falls quiet, his attention focused on getting them down the stairs without falling. The man has Obi-Wan’s arm around his shoulders, his own arm around Obi-Wan’s waist. He’s shorter, but he bears his weight without issue. 

Obi-Wan’s feet touch the mud and he shudders. He looks around. Most of the birds have left—the ones who haven’t are the ones brave enough or greedy enough to ignore the promise or possibility of violence in exchange for an easy meal. He blinks, swallows down blood, salty and still warm, rich, and then shakes his head, tears himself out of their minds.

“I almost did,” Fett says, his voice low. He’s not looking at him.

“I am glad you changed your mind, then,” he replies, trying for levity. He doesn’t quite manage it, and Fett doesn’t laugh.

“I’m going to lift you up,” he says instead, and then he does just that: he kneels and heaves Obi-Wan against his right shoulder. He raises his left hand, the Outsider’s mark shining silver and red and gold and green and silver again, and then everything goes black. 

ii.

He wakes up many hours later. The sky is red, and the sun’s going down, and its dying rays paint everything crimson and gold. Obi-Wan blinks and sits up on the bed. He’s alone.

There is a note next to him on the pillow. Obi-Wan blinks the sleep from his eyes and reaches for it. He reads the words, traces the handwriting with the tips of his fingers, and then reads it again, his head pounding in the low light. Jango’s handwriting is—well. He was once a Morley noble, and it shows. Obi-Wan snorts. 

He himself writes like the thing he is: an Abbey foundling, torn away from his parents when he was young enough to forget them and everything they had ever taught him. He writes like they taught them all to write in the Abbey school: functional and ugly and uniform. 

He can’t remember when that happened, but Fett must have taken off his shackles. He rubs at his wrists, rotates them once, twice—they still hurt, but the pain is so faint as to be easy to ignore. He looks around himself: the place looks like Fett has been there for a while. There’re clothes on one of the chairs, bloody and torn, and books, and fruit and canned eels and empty beer bottles on a small wooden table. The chimney, while empty, still smells of smoke, and the room feels warm.

The bed is—the bed is the best thing Obi-Wan has ever slept in in his life. He brushes the silk sheets with his dirty fingers, and then sighs and stands up.

The note was curt, to the point: there is a bathroom. He should use it: he stinks. Fett will be back soon. 

There is a bathroom through one of the doors that line the walls. In the bathroom there is a big copper bathtub—it’s one of the cleanest things in the apartment: it obviously sees frequent use. Obi-Wan traces the lip of the tub with his fingertip and shivers—the metal is cold. He turns on the faucet and begins the process of undressing himself. 

There are a pair of clippers in the cupboard under the sink, and while the bathtub fills with water Obi-Wan shaves off his beard and most of his hair, all the while trying not to look at his reflection on the mirror. 

Afterwards he sticks his head under the sink to get rid of the hair and then, dripping all over the tiles, he grabs a washcloth and begins cleaning the worst of the dirt and the blood and the sweat off of his body, his movements mechanical. He can’t remember if he ate something before falling asleep—he must, he’s hungry but he feels stronger, more alert—but he’s so tired, so weak still.

When he’s more or less clean he leaves the washcloth with his dirty clothes and steps into the bathtub.

The water’s so warm he almost cries, at first. He shudders and hugs his knees against his chest, trying to stay under, the water tickling the tip of his nose. 

It hits him, then: he’s alive. Somehow he got out. Twelve hours ago he was sure he was going to die there, in Coldridge, for something he hadn’t done, collateral damage of one the many petty little feuds the Abbey of the Everyman calls its bread and butter. 

But he hasn’t—he’s alive, and he’s free, or as free as an escaped prisoner who’s been helped by an infamous heretic such as the Wolf can be. He’ll have to hide, to flee Dunwall forever—he can’t see another way.

There isn’t one.

He needs to calm down. In and out, in and out—he exhales his anxiety, what’s left of the terror and the hopelessness, and he closes his eyes, reaches out for the birds, for his birds—after so many days with their little bird thoughts as his only company it’s so easy he knows it should scare him. He’s heard and read and investigated people like him, with gifts similar to his, who got lost or too deep and never return from wherever their minds go when they jump skins. Women barking like dogs, a man who thought he was a fish and drowned on a cell, gasping for air. 

He ends up falling asleep, head barely over the water, and he doesn’t dream—if he does, the crows take his nightmares away, pick them apart like carrion or rotten fruit.

When he wakes up again the bath water is almost cold and the room is dark save for a lonely tallow candle that fills the room with the stink of burning fat. Obi-Wan blinks, sits up on the bathtub. Everything hurts, and he winces, hears something in his back crack.

Fett is there with him, sitting on a low chair, his rough woolen shirt jarring against the slashed pink silk of the back of the seat. Obi-Wan blinks water from his eyelids.

“Thought you’d drowned,” Fett says. Obi-Wan doesn’t answer. He leans on the side of the tub closest to the other man, lets his hand dangle between them. Fett eyes it, and then looks up and away at Obi-Wan’s face. “You cut your hair.”

“I did,” he replies after a while. “Sorry for the mess.”

Fett shrugs.

Obi-Wan watches him. He is as hard to read as always. He’s rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and the only light in the room dances over tattoos and scars, most of the latter new, some of them still tender and red.

He never asked why Fett hasn’t left yet. He wanted to—but he thought that, if he ever was caught, it’d be better the less he knew. 

“Thank you,” he says. Fett frowns. He is still not looking at him but away, and he looks calm and relaxed and at ease, but Obi-Wan knows he isn’t, he knows him too well and can sense it with whatever the Void cursed him with when he was born. 

“You saved my life,” Fett answers. “I owed you.”

Obi-Wan leans his chin on his own arm. He doesn’t look away. He’s getting cold, he’s beginning to shiver, and he’s still hungry—but he doesn’t move. 

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan repeats. He blinks and looks away. He really wants to touch his own neck—he thinks he can still feel the rope—but he suppresses the instinct. He forces out a laugh. “I thought I was going to die there.”

The chair creaks, and suddenly FEtt is right in front of him, so much closer and human and alive. He cradles Obi-Wan’s face with his left hand, the one that shines and makes his head hurt, brushes a blunt thumb over a too-sharp cheekbone.

Obi-Wan leans in, at first, and then away—or he tries to: Fett’s other hand curls around his neck, his fingers bury themselves in what’s left of his hair, and he doesn’t let him hide or retreat. Obi-Wan blinks his eyes open and stares into Fett’s dark ones. When the man leans his forehead against Obi-Wan’s, the touch so gentle as to be barely a caress, Obi-Wan lets his eyes slip closed once again, and he breathes out a shivery sigh.

“I almost left you there,” Fett whispers. His breath smells of something sweet, of figs and fruit. Quite against his will, Obi-Wan’s right hand grabs Fett by the wrist, still wet, and holds on. The man swallows. “I can’t believe I almost left you there.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t say that he can, even if it’s the truth, because it’s cruel and ungrateful if not undeserved. 

“But you didn’t,” he replies. He opens his eyes and leans back enough so that he can look at Fett in the face. 

For an instant they just stare at each other, breathless with what almost was—Obi-Wan’s still half-bird, half-mad, and holds onto FEtt with desperation, shivering in the cold water of the tub.

Fett helps him out. He gets drenched, but he doesn’t say a word. He helps Obi-WAn cross the room towards the bed and then fetches him a rough towel and helps him dry himself, his hands gentle but methodical. Afterwards, when Obi-Wan’s once again lying under the sheets, he gets up, and Obi-Wan scowls, half-sleep but still aware enough to know he doesn't want him to leave.

He thinks about leaning out of the bed and hooking his fingers around his belt, about pulling until Fett falls on the mattress, but he doesn’t. 

He sleeps. His dreams are full of birds.

iii.

When he wakes up again he’s still alone, and the sun is rising far away to the east. Obi-Wan blinks and turns around on the empty and cold bed, and watches it rise through the windows at the other side of the bed. They connect the bedroom to a small, rickety balcony, and the warm golden sunlight shines off the black feathers of his crows. There is half a dozen resting on the railing, still asleep, waiting for him—once he sits up on the bed, most of them leave.

Obi-Wan rummages around the room until he finds a pair of trousers, a shirt, and puts them on. Afterwards he grabs an apple from the table, drinks some tap water, the bathroom still full of his hair, and then opens the doors to the balcony and steps outside.

It’s very cold, but the air smells almost clean, the familiar stink of rot, of unwashed bodies slowly decomposing and dead fish and deader whales and oil and smoke still subtle. The wind whistles through the roofs, and it brings the promise of more rain, of a new storm—but that will come later. Right now, the sun shines red and bright and Obi-Wan’s free.

He shares his apple with the remaining crow, feeding small bites to it with careful fingers, and when the bird leaves he knows he is no longer alone. 

Fett leans on the railing, still wearing his coat. He stinks of smoke, and when Obi-Wan glances at him he sees that there’s blood under his nose, a long scratch on his left cheekbone. He frowns.

“Rough night?” he asks. Too late, he wonders if he should have kept his mouth shut.

Fett shrugs. He is not looking at him but at the sunrise.

“It went well,” he replies after a while. Obi-Wan cocks his head. He really wants to ask, but something tells him it’s not the right moment. 

“So now what,” he says instead. Fett scoffs, looks at him and away again. “Will you keep me here? Wearing your clothes and feeding your food to the crows?”

The man’s face doesn’t change, but something tells Obi-Wan he doesn’t exactly dislike the idea.

“You’re free to leave,” Fett says after a while, however. “You owe me nothing.”

Leave where, Obi-Wan doesn’t ask. If he ever had a life beyond Dunwall he’s forgotten its shape. This city—rotten to the core and damp and cruel—is the only thing he knows. 

He feels—lost. Aimless. For so long his life has been orders and order and fear and violence and hatred; however, while he abhorred the Abbey, it still gave him purpose, a home, a handful of moments of almost happiness.

He doesn’t quite know what he is without them, without it. Just a man who is half-bird.

Obi-Wan glances at Fett—the man’s already looking at him, eyes flat.

He follows him back inside when Fett turns away and returns to the room, follows him right to the bathroom and sits on the chair in the corner while Fett takes off his clothes and fills the bathtub with water once again.

Afterwards he gets in behind him, the water so hot it almost burns, and he jerks him off kneeling over his legs, Fett’s gasps echoing through the room, his nails scratching down his back, and Obi-Wan’s still aimless and lost—but he is alive, and he’s free, and when Jango pushes him down on the bed and kneels between his legs it’s difficult to remember why that is a bad thing.


End file.
